1935: Cal Jardine is a soldier of fortune. Forced to flee Hamburg, where he has been smuggling out Jews, he is recruited by a secretive British committee to smuggle guns from Romania into Abyssinia, threatened with an Italian invasion. Taken to the Horn of Africa they are then transported over the harsh landscape, a slave trader's route full of bandits, into the hands of the Ethiopian Army. On his travels Jardine acquires more baggage than he cares for, including a beautiful, but difficult American female in search of her archaeologist mother, a drunken British reporter and a daredevil French flyer.The Ethiopians are ill-equipped to a face the invading Italian army, equipped with tanks, bombers, and poison gas. Trained for war, can Jardine walk away or will he be drawn into a bloody conflict against massive odds, and still save those who now depend on him?